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My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Vladimir Nabokov
Age: 77 †
Born: 1899
Born: January 1
Died: 1977
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Chess Composer
Chess Player
Journalist
Lepidopterist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
St. Petersburg
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Vladimir Sirin
Vl. Sirin
Wladimir Nabokoff-Sirin
V. Sirin
Pleasure
Pleasures
Known
Hunting
Simple
Soft
Music
Oppression
Writing
Cruelty
Men
Stupidity
Intense
Loathing
Crime
Butterfly
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
Vladimir Nabokov
I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
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Look at this tangle of thorns.
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Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
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Ada girl, adored girl, [...] I'm a radiant void. I'm convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended.
Vladimir Nabokov
Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the a.non.y.muse roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.
Vladimir Nabokov
The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
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Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.
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My answer to your question'Does the writer have a social responsibility?' is NO.You owe me ten cents, sir.
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Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
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It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov
The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.
Vladimir Nabokov
Style and Structure are the essence of a book great ideas are hogwash.
Vladimir Nabokov
Solitude was corrupting me.
Vladimir Nabokov
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.
Vladimir Nabokov
The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious it has been set free.
Vladimir Nabokov
Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy.
Vladimir Nabokov
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
Vladimir Nabokov